The animal, found in present-day Egypt, was named Tutcetus rayanensis, referring to the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
after the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun—a fitting name for a family of whales known as the “king of ancient seas,” says, an Egyptian paleontologist at The American University in Cairo and senior author of the study. The fossilized whale, like King Tut, died very young.
How the vertebrate and skull bones are fused suggests the whale was close to adulthood but did not reach it. It’s likely this whale specimen died before adulthood, though it was already sexually mature. The fossil remains show it was old enough to have adult molars but too young to have permanent premolars. Meanwhile, its enamel, the outer layer of its teeth, was very smooth, indicating it fed on fish, octopus, or other soft prey. Both are common features in mammals with shorter life cycles.
Egyptian paleontologists Abdullah Gohar, Mohamed Sameh, and Hesham Sallam next to fossils of the newly identified basilosaurid whale,The transition from a semiaquatic lifestyle to a fully aquatic one, as the basilosaurids did, is an area where more fossil data is needed to understand how these creatures evolved, says
, an associate professor of biology at Calvin University in Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “Given its geologic age and phylogenetic position,But why were these aquatic creatures dwarves compared to other basilosaurids? Basilosaurids around this time period were 13 to 59 feet in length. In contrast, this ancient whale was approximately 8 feet long and weighed around 412 pounds, making it “the smallest whale ever,” Sallam says.
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